The Moving Walkway is Ending

 

I got back to my room at 12:30 last night. As much as I tried, I was unable to get eaten by the promised moutain lions. I believe that they could be found in Pacific Grove. It's astoundingly quiet after dark and the yards are dark and there's plenty of room for one to move through. Oh well. I took a shower as soon as I got in, got dressed and went to bed. I had set my alarm for 4:30, but it turns out I didn't need it since I woke up at 4:20 in a panic. I rounded up my stuff and went out to meet my taxi, who showed up on time (4:50a)- something I never believed would happen. He drove me over to the Monterey Transit Plaza and we talked about fishing in the Bay. Turns out the squid might be returning after a few el Nino years.

The shuttle was just a passenger van, and it got us to San Jose right at 7:00a as scheduled. SJC is a big old mess. It's got way more people than it was designed for. Plus, Southwest and Air Mexico are in the same terminal. They have tried to set it up so they can get the lines worked out but with the new security they now have at least 3 long, snaky line that end up crossing, plus the lines block new people trying to get to the counters. A woman who was working for security was standing there just telling everyone that they had to behave, since she didn't want any fistfights breaking out again.

The flight was mostly uneventful, I guess, since I slept through the whole trip. I stayed awake for the takeoff from SJC, and for the evasive manouvers the pilot had to take to avoid another jet. I woke up for a minute when we landed in Reno, but I fell asleep again until we took off again an hour later. I then slept until we were about to land in Chicago. I actually felt pretty good when we landed. I got a sandwich at the food court and surrendered to the charge for the wireless. This concourse is pretty new, but there's almost no outlets and I need one so I'm sitting in the aisle like all the other junkies.

The plane at this gate is about to empty, so I need to get out of the way.

I'll be home in 3 hours.

Finally.

The End is Near

It's almost dinner time and I'm sitting in the wireless zone waiting to eat. The past two days have been full of ridiculous amounts of GIS geeking. People here are working on so many different projects and GIS is the thing that ties them all together, so discussions start out talking about a conservation issue and how gis was used to address that issue to how someone else used that gis process to solve a different issue and so on, then it's an hour later and it's time for another talk or dinner or whatever. The whole thing is like a dream. By accident I think, the keynote speaker for the conference said something that I paraphrased into what I think is a great way to describe this conference: Dreams, Passion, Wisdom. SCGIS: Building Community in service of protecting the earth. Its kind of hippy, but it's what you get when you bring together a couple hundred starry-eyed conservationists with extensive science and software skills.

Anyway, tonight's the big conference tradition: The Silent Auction. They said yesterday that over the past 5 years the auction has raised $25,000 all of which has gone to support the scholarship fund to help pay for international conservationist to attend the meeting. It gets more and more crazy each year, with the scholars bringing more and more goods from home. I've seen stuff go for $300 dollars, and there might be 2 or three things that same night that go for that much. There's the silent acution, where you write your bids down, kind of like an analog Ebay, but then there's the live auction, which is the traditional kind. The guy who invented SCGIS, Charles Convis, serves as auctioneer and he's crazy. He got skits and accents and fables- he once sold a half-liter of bottom shelf vodka that one of the scholars brought over from Russia for like $200. It's ridiculous and hilarious and exciting.

I just can't imagine what these international scholars think about coming over here from Angola or Thailand or Mozambique. They get like 2 weeks of training and support before the user conference, they attend the UC, then they come to the SCGIS meeting. It's hard for me to process it.

It was solid gray clouds yesterday until just before the sun set, then the moon and the stars came out and its been clear ever since. I got lost on my way home last night because I was marveling at the sight of the moon shining through what I was calling the lorax pines in the yards. Again, dreamlike. Aside from that, the walking to and from the hotel has been uneventful, aside from the dog-sized deer and the hummingbirds and woodpeckers and scrub jays and ravens and the sparrow that is nesting in the dunes. There's an endangered wallflower that grows in the dunes here and it's easy to find because they are all have little wire cages over them to protect them from the deerdogs.

So I canceled my rental car in lieu of taking a shuttle to the SJO. It should save some cash, but it means I have to leave my hotel at like 4:50a. My Southwest flight leaves SJO at 9:50a. I don't know how this is going to turn out.

More Photos

 

Big Sur Valley

 

California Coast

 

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Beach

 

Sign at not-so-Pacific Grove

Catching Up II

 

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Pacific Grove listening to the bell at the lighthouse tolling off in the distance. I finally made it to the Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS) Annual Meeting at California's Asilomar Conference facility. I'm staying at the Sea Breeze Inn, not at Asilomar. The Sea Breeze is a little downmarket for this area, but its perfect for me. Not really, since I'm typing this with the computer sitting on the bed and me sitting in a rocking chair, there being no actual desk in this room. But whatever. It's cheap. But no wireless.

Anyway, Saturday. I got up early, left the room around 7:30a and headed off to Sunset Beach State Park. I was half considering not going, since I had just been to two beaches further south at Elkhorn Slough, and I figured that Sunset would just be more of the same. I'm glad I toughed it out because Sunset was completely different. First off, it's a pay site. That's actually a good thing, since that means someone is paying a modicum of attention to the facilities and such. I got there around 8:00a. You pay at the booth and then drive a good distance south, parallel to the ocean, past the campgrounds and the little community of homes on top of the ridge. The road finally turns toward the ocean and you realize that you are a good what 200-300 feet above the water. There's a great view as you descend to the shore. Park and then climb over the little beach ridge and you have a huge beach in front of you. What appears to be miles in either direction, and maybe a hundred yards from the big ocean dunes/cliffs to the water at high tide. Very different from Elkhorn. The beach is pretty flat, like you might see in Florida or maybe like Huntington Beach in Los Angeles. Since I was there kind of early it was still pretty empty. It was quite dramatic, with the ocean washing the beach and the sun starting to bun off the fog so the coastal sage scrub, with the giant yellow lupines on the cliffs starting to light up. With no people visible in front of me, I could feel like I had the whole beach to myself. Me and the gulls and shorebirds. I have no idea what I was seeing, but I know I didn't recognize what they were. By the time I turned around and headed back to the car, people were starting to fill up the beach, including surfcasting fishermen. On the way out I stopped at a parking area at the top of the ridge and got out to check out the view. You walk a short way through the aromatic scrub and come to a fenced-in open area that I realized was a hang-gliding launch pad. It gave a fantastic view. More different birds I didn't know.

I drove back to the Red Roof, finished off my previous post, packed up and decided that I would go into the Monterey area and look for a hotel room. I took a slight detour through Watsonville and then got on Highway 1 and headed south. This road takes you past Elkorn area, then through the artichoke growing region, then on towards the Monterey (MRY) metroplex. Most of the geographic area of metro MRY is in the towns of Sand City and Seaside. After stopping at a few hotels to check rates and availability, I finally found a hotel where I could mooch off their wireless (Thanks Travelodge!) and found a Travelocity listing for a hotel in Seaside (the Blue Lagoon Inn) that had a great rate and decent reviews on TripAdvisor. I stopped there, it seemed on the up-and-up. It was run by an Indian family and they gave me Room 0, next to the office. Did I mention that they had free high-speed wireless? It was around 1:00p by this time, so I dropped off my suitcase and headed back out.

It's just short of an hour drive to the Big Sur region from MRY. The drive is along the coast most of the way, and it's got to be one of the most scenic routes in the world. The route is curvy and the road is narrow, but you can't avoid seeing the dramatic vistas of the epic coastline. There are viewing pullouts and parking for beach access along the way, but I pressed on like Lee nails until I got to Pfeiffer Burns State Park. There are a variety of private campgrounds in the area, but PBSP has the most developed trails, etc. I paid at the booth, parked at the trailhead spot and set out to see the Waterfall and the Valley Vista trails. In terms of site develoment, the trails aren't that much different from say Hocking Hills State Park. Obviously heavily used. You start out walking up the valley along the stream through a grove of some Redwood sprouts, the big one only maybe 4 or 5 feet in diameter. After a 20 minute walk to the falls, the trail then turns uphill and you walk though the dry oak scrub forest that is actually more characteristic of the area. Another 30 minutes and some bitter recriminations over leaving the water in the car later, you come out on the top of a ridge that offers views of the valley that Highway 1 runs through, and of the 1000+ foot chapparell covered mountain next to this wee ridge.

After the hike back down to the car and stopping at the Big Sur Lodge to check out the facilites, I headed off to find the JPBSP beach. This beach is listed in every guide of Big Sur. I had to see it. You drive a little way down Highway 1 then turn off onto a county road. The county road soon becomes a two-mile-long single lane road. Slightly curvy but mostly flat with just dirt and woods along the roadside. There were some periods of negotiations with oncoming drivers, but nothing too serious, and eventually I got to the booth where I paid the lady and parked the car. During one of the oncoming car negotiations, one of the drivers shouted something as he passed that I didn't quite understand. It sounded something like "storm" but I wasn't sure until I started down the trail to the beach. He said something about "sandstorm." There was a tremendous wind blowing off the ocean, the force of which I've never seen. It was so strong I'm sure it would have stripped the leaves off trees and maybe uprooted them. As a result, walking on the beach meant that you were sandblasted. It was hard and unrelenting. Sand was everywhere. I managed to sneak my way along the cliffs, sticking to various nooks and crannies along the way to stay out of the blowing sand. The whole visit was awesome and gorgeous. The cliff were dramatic, the solid rocks out from the shore were dramatic, the color of the ocean was dramatic, the freaking sandstorm was dramatic. After a while, though, I started to think about developing hypothermia from standing in non-stop, gale-force winds blowing off maybe 50 degree water. So I headed back to the car. I saw a sign I had missed on the way in about how last summer, a family from the midwest lost a little girl who got sucked out by a rip current and her mother and her mother who tried to save the little girl. I completely understand. The ocean doesn't care, and the display I had just seen had demonstrated just a little of its power.

It was getting late and I didn't want to be driving along Highway 1 in the dark (see above re: curvy, cliffs, etc.) So I headed back to The Blue Lagoon. I got some frozen dinner from the Safeway next door, heated it up in the room's microwave and turned in.

I got up early this morning, returned the rental to the airport, took a cab to Asilomar, checked my suitcase, and took a stroll along the beach. It was just after 8:00a and the fog was still covering the beach and the adjacent golf course. There were some local people out walking their Labradors, with the dogs stopping to smell the large clumps of kelp and barking at things only they could see in the ocean. I headed back to the lodge, and spent the next 8 hours in a GIS class. 7, actually, because we took an hour for lunch at the dining hall. I had pasta with tomato sauce and tempeh (!) (one of the great things about California...) and probably the best mixed greens salad I've ever had. I think I had 3 servings. The various lettuces had tooth and texture and flavor like I've never had before. I heard a story of MarketPlace about farmers in California trying to develop markets for small scale (10 acres) organic local produce, and the chef from Asilomar was quoted saying how they try to buy as much of the local produce as they can. Keep it up, I say.

The watch just beeped to tell me it's midnight. The guy in the room next door has been snoring steadily for an hour now, and I suppose I should follow his example. It's a 25 minute walk through what has to be one of the most desirable collections of modest suburban homes I've ever seen to get to Asilomar from here. The show starts at 9:00a. I'll probably leave here between 7:30 and 8:00 so I can have time to try to post this over the wireless available in the main hall at Asilomar. (They boast about how they want the facility to be a site of calming lack of distractions, going so far as to not have phones or TVs in the rooms, but I guess they had to make some concessions.)

Hopefully I won't have to make such a marathon post next time.

Around the Bay

 

I left Salinas Saturday morning after stopping in Old Town for coffee and checking out the farmer's market. For being at the epicenter of agriculture, the market was pretty modest. Mostly it featured non-food goods. It was nice, though. I headed north out of town with the intention of finding a hotel in Watsonville. The drive between Salinas and Watsonville is very hilly, but again, you know you've arrived because you enter into a valley covered with vegetables. And in the case of Watsonville, strawberries. Again like Salinas, Watsonville is an old farming town. I thought I could find the hotels that I knew were here, but after driving around for a while, I decided I might as well try my luck in Santa Cruz. I headed over to Highway 1 and started north. I knew from previous research that Santa Cruz on Saturday night was either full or expensive. I decided to look a little farther out. I headed up Route 17, which runs between San Jose and Santa Cruz. There wasn't much along there that was suitable so I went over to Route 9, which also runs between basically San Jose and Santa Cruz, only it's just two lanes and quite curvy. What's nice is that it goes through redwood forest most of the way. I only found an Econolodge north of Fenton but it was full. I turned around and headed back south towards Fenton . There wasn't anything available there so I followed 9 all the way to Santa Cruz. That was a wild curvy ride on a skinny road with rock outcrops right up against the road. And to make it more fun, packs of cyclists headed downhill. And constant traffic uphill. I didn't get to notice much except that the part that goes through the county park is all redwoods, and it's very popular.

I eventually made it to Santa Cruz. I picked up Highway 1 again and headed north out of town. I stopped at two non-descript hotels; one was full and the other wanted $250 for their smallest room. So I kept driving out of town. I soon came to my second farmer's market of the day, and this one was what you hope a California market would be like. Not very large, but filled with vegetables, flowers, and fresh fish. I bought a bag of dried organic apricots. They taste like jam. Delicious.

I turned around and decided to try around the beach downtown. That was a bad idea. Saturday traffic was awful. I finally saw a hotel that didn't have its No Vacancy sign lit up- another Econolodge. The big convict who was at the front desk told me they had a room $140. I declined because none of the rooms had windows and the place actually looked like a prison. I decided then that I might as well head south to Monterey.

On my way to Monterey on Highway 1, I passed the Red Roof I'm in now. I stopped and got a room. after checking in and changing I headed out. I drove around the area, following the Pacific Bike Trail signs. I eventually ended up back on Highway 1. I turned south and after a short drive I came to Moss Landing State Beach. Nabil and I stopped here some years ago and he didn't like it because it had so much debris on the beach. It's a long beach and I guess it doesn't get a lot of visitors. The shape of the beach isn't right for bathing, or maybe it's because the water is gross due to the inputs from the Salinas valley. Anyway, I liked it, since it had so much debris. A lot of shells, sand dollars, many types of kelp, and several dead animals- a seal, a sea lion, and what I'm guessing are Pacific Loons. You don't often get to see a beach in its natural state, and this is what I imagine that state is.

I have to go now. It's time to check out and housekeeping is getting anxious.

I've got a line on two hotels in Monterey that have cheap rooms available tonight. I'm not sure what I've got in mind aside from that.

Catching Up

 

One of the problems with traveling is the uncertainty. This actually isn't a bug, it's a feature. It wouldn't be any fun if you always knew what was coming up next. But still, it's a little stressful not knowing where or when I'm going to have access to some reliable high speed wireless internet. Right now I'm sitting in my room in the Red Roof Watsonville using its wonderful wireless.

I arrived in Monterey Friday afternoon. I rented my car and set off south, towards Big Sur. My vague plan was to find some place in that area that actually wasn't full the way all their web sites said they were. Unfortunately they were telling the truth. I passed all the Big Sur campgrounds and kept going south without any plan or even a reason to think that I was going to find anything. I've driven this road before and I know that camping places are fairly sparse along this road. I was pondering the wisdom of driving all the way south to San Louis Obispo, while at the same time knowing that I had to just give up and go back. I had just driven past the Henry Miller Memorial Library when I came up around a curve and a very large bird soared over the road. I knew what it was immediately but I couldn't let myself believe that a Condor had just soared 20 feet above my car. Stuff like that isn't supposed to happen. It was a tense minute or two because the road is quite curvy and the cost of error is a several hundred foot trip into the ocean, but damn- those birds are really, really rare. Unbelievably, as I was driving, several more Condors soared over the road. This time I was prepared and pulled off into one of the many roadside viewing pull-offs. I grabbed my camera and ran out and started taking pictures. At one time there was a total of six bird circling my car.

After about 20 minutes of birdwatching, the condors had moved on and I figured I might as well too. I turned around and started back north. As I passed the Miller Library again all I could think of was the words from the Dan Bern song Marilyn. The drive back to Monterey was much more pleasant than the drive down.

I had decided to go to Salinas, since my prior research had turned up some cheap hotels there. The drive from Monterey to Salinas takes you through classic California landscape. Rolling hills covered with golden brown grass, with the occasional slope covered with oaks, chaparral, or maybe eucalyptus. Eventually you cross some kind of divide and all of a sudden you are in the Salinas Valley. You know you are there because the land turns almost completely level, and for as far as you can see the field are planted with vegetables. Mostly it was cabbages or kale. You could tell by the smell.

The city of Salinas is like many farming towns. Lots of tractor dealers and other farm support businesses. But eventually the main road takes you into what they call Old Town Salinas. It's a mostly charming downtown. I found out after driving around for a while that the reason they call it Old Town and not downtown is that the modern part of Salinas, with the shopping centers and suburban housing etc. is not really related to Old Town. It's almost like two separate towns right next to each other that happen to have the same name. Salinas would give an anti-immigrant activist a heart attack. The place is thoroughly Mexican. But it's funny, you see the whole immigrant spectrum, from those on the shady side of town next to the factories, to those in the newer more moder houses, to those in the standard American suburb over by the mall. Anyway, I eventually found a Motel 6 that had a room, which was lucky because there some sort of music festival this weekend. Of course, at the rate I wanted to pay, no hi speed wireless. I did pick up on some networks in the neighborhood, at other hotels, and I tried driving over to them to mooch off their network, but no luck. Instead, I picked a mexican restaurant at random, got a burrito, and went back to the room and went to bed.

So that was Friday. I'll do a new post for Saturday.

Carrion Consumers

What's that? You want to know if I saw any Condors while I was driving through the Big Sur coast?

Why, yes. Yes I did.

 

GIS Analyst

2007 ESRI User Conference is over. My head is filled with GIS propaganda and my feet hurt. The San Diego Convention Center is huge. They already had a perfectly good one but I guess it was too small so in 2001 they built another one next to it. The user conference uses all that space, plus some space in the adjacent Marriott, so there's really no way to avoid walking a lot. And for me, I warmed up in the morning with the walk from my hotel down to the Convention Center, which takes about 20 minutes. It wasn't bad though. The neighborhoods are interesting and I got to stop in on my way at Pierre's Place for a very good non-Starbucks americano. Luckily though all that walking is interspersed with long periods of sitting. The sessions are 75 minutes long. Imagine trying to describe how to use a piece of software in an hour.

Anyway, this part is done. I need to go through all the crap I picked up at the conference and decide if I want to carry it around for the next week, I need to make sure I've got my plane ticket and called for a taxi, etc. My flight to Monterey leaves at 11:30am and arrives in Monterey at 12:40pm. Hopefully the airport won't be too bad. The flight I'm on leaves from what they call the Commuter Terminal. I guess it's for those folks just have to work in San Francisco and sleep in La Jolla or what ever.

More Pictures

Look at all the junkies.
 

Just like the real thing
 

The view from the North Tower of the Marriott
 

TNC @ work
 

They call it a user conference

It always alarms me just how much this conference throws at you. There's some 14,000 people who come to this thing. Classes about GIS all day. GIS people everywhere. I'll hear more GIS talk just walking around at lunch than I might hear in a year at home. They start out trying to get every one all stoked up with the cool coolness of the cool software and how it's going to save the world. Then they give us alcohol and turn us loose iin a big room filled with hundreds of maps. The fact that nearly everyone is jetlagged and drinking on a mostly empty stomach and is then stuck into what amounts to a room full of GIS porn just makes the whole thing sot of surreal. Then everyone goes out for a real dinner or maybe just some more drinks and then they go back to their hotels. It starts all over again the next day, and the next. Thankfully Thursday will be the last day of presentations. Even a junkie can only take so much.

First Day

I left the hotel this morning to find out that it had turned into San Francisco overnight. The temperatures had dropped down into the frigid 60s. I guess if I were sleeping on the streets or had come here for the beach (both seemingly very popular here...) I would mind, but as it was it was kind of nice not to have to always walk on the shady side of the street.
I had the walk mostly to myself today. Not a whole lot of tourists or office workers out and about on Sunday morning. This photo is of one of the buildings on my way.

The walk though the Gaslamp District the morning after Saturday night is not all that pleasant, with the smell and dirt of spent fun all around. But I got to the Convention center fine and took care of the registration and all that with no trouble.

When we finally got to break for lunch I made my way to the Harbor side of the building and stood in the sun, trying to overcome the building's AC and taking in the ever charming view.


I made it over to the Downtown Farmers Market to see if I could find something cheap to eat. I ended up doing even better than that. There was a guy there who sold what I guess you would call gourmet crepe sandwiches. He actually made the crepes to order on this special two grill setup. He'd pour batter on the first one and when it had cooked, he'd use a long spatula to pick it up and move it over to the other one, wher he'd add the ingredients then fold it up and serve it in a paper sno-cone cup. I had one with cheese, peppers, spinach, and tuna. Oh my goodness. That was one of the best sandwiches ever.

Back to the class, taught by the guy who came up with ArcHydro. I remember seeing a presentation of the first version of the software like 5 years ago and it is just amazing what people have done with the framework. It's the kind of thing that makes you have faith in power of human imagination. It's that good.

We finished at 5 and I headed back to the hotel, which is just over the top of the hill in this picture.

That was a good walk and now I'm beat and jet lagged and its time for bed.

You're not August Ohio anymore

This is one of the first views of San Diego you see when you leave SAN.

Touchdown

Well, that was long. We finally got loaded on the plane at CMH 2 hour behind schedule. The staff at the counter couldn't tell us what was going to happen once we got to Midway. We'd find out when we we got to Midway. What happened to me was that I got put on the next flight to San Diego, leaving in 3.5 hours. What can you do?

Midway has gotten a lot nicer since I first flew there 15 or so years ago. They've added a couple new terminals and now it hardly has that Party at the Bus Station feel that the original terminal had. But as modern terminals/malls go this one is pretty nice. A good selection of different food, immortal Jake and Elwood, and the Midway Memorial.

Finally the plane takes off, half an hour after they really, really promised us we be leaving. Luckily for me I was able to sleep most of the flight. I don't think I really woke up until the captain came on to tell us we were going to be crossing the Rockies and the turbulence might be bad. And he was right. But it only lasted for a short time and I fell asleep again for a few more states, and then it was time to land.

Of course getting baggage was a chore. Seemed like a dozen flights all arrived at the same time and had their luggage just sort of tossed into a big pile. But it only took about an hour after we landed to get out of the building.

I grabbed a taxi out front, and when I told the driver where I was going he was upset. "Where?" He had been reading a novel in Cyrillic. I had to reassure him that I knew what I was talking about, but he believed me. Got to the Hotel Occidental 10 dollars later and checked in. The room is small but seems clean and the hotel is nice.

Since I hadn't eaten for many hours I walked over to Little Italy and found some sushi. Miso, edamame, and a veggie roll. Excellant. Finally to bed.

IL to NV

The theory now is that once the guy gets back from the parts store and does some vague stuff to some broken part of the plane we'll be off to Midway.

What happens after I get to Midway is a little unclear, but there are several options. Unfortunately, they involve either flying into Las Vegas and/or arriving in San Diego at like 10:30 local time. Which is approximately past my bedtime, especially with 5 hours of sleep last night. Plus I'm going to miss the early registration at the ESRI conference.

Luckily, CMH has free wireless. I don't know about Midway.

Gettin up outta here

Despite my best efforts of procrastination and avoidance, I managed to leave home. On time and with everything I need.

I actually got out of the house a half hour early. I had my schedule planned out so that I'd have plenty of time to get processed at the airport an it turns out that was a good idea. Going through security took nearly 10 minutes. That gave me only 90 minutes before the plane took off.

Things were going well up until boarding time when the guy came out and said something about a leaky hydraulic line.....

I don't know where I'm going now or when I'll get there.

Oh well